The Three Main Causes Of World War One

Thirty-seven million casualties, thirty-two countries, four years, two alliance systems, and one assassination. the Great War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, was perhaps one of the most important and destructive wars of all times. All major industrialized countries including Britain, the United States of America, Germany, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia were reeled into the Western front in France and the eastern front near Russia to fight. Although there were multiple causes to the strife known as World War one; the main three were the greed of imperialism, the pride of nationalism, and the threat of militarism. Sidney Fay Bradshaw once said, “Intense rivalry for prestige, markets resources and colonies led to confrontations…these

The bad blood between nations had been going on for decades, nations were always fighting over land and power. For example, the scramble for Africa which had began in 1880 and had almost every imperial nation like Great Britain, France, and Germany competing for that last piece of land which was Africa. This “race” created so much hate because of the fierce competition that the Berlin Conference had to be held from 1814-1815. At the conference its was decided that any nation could claim african land so long as the notified other nations and proved they could handle it. Still, the scramble for land created the fuel for war . Another example was set in 1898 Great Britain and France who were “best friends” almost went to war for an Upper Nile river basin in Fashoda, Eastern Africa. the feud grew to be so large that both nations had started preparing for war until France decided to peacefully withdraw to maintain its friendship with Great Britain due to a push from Théophile Delcassé who was the new foreign minister for France.. If a tiny little piece of

Militarism or “the principle or policy of maintaining a large military establishment.” is one of the greatest causes of the Great War.(Dictionary.com) One of the main reasons that this war was even started was because Austria-Hungary already had their war plans ready and they had to be used. Without those war plans the Serbians could have had longer to negotiate. Also the Germans unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman telegram which was sent in 1917 by Arthur Zimmerman who was Germanys state secretary for foreign affairs telling mexico to go to war with america, and trying to preoccupy America from the war added on to the flame of World War 1. Additionally, when other countries of the world saw Germany gearing up for a war, they started preparing as well. A great example of this is the naval race between Great Britain and Germany in 1906 all the way to 1914. It all started when Germany started building up its navy and became a threat to Britain who had been the leading naval nation for hundreds of years. As soon as Britain heard about Germany's war preparation they started too, by building new state of the art ships to compete with germany, one of which was the Dreadnought and was released in 1906. Perhaps if the Austro-Hungarians weren’t so prepared for war they would have listened to the negotiation that the Serbians wanted. If the Germans hadn’t kept using